NEW RE-BUILDS: The 300SLR Gullwing Coupe Leaves the Museum and Comes Out to Play!

In my previous post, I went back in time about 2.5 years to take a second, more detailed look at the JAG Hobbies TR3 chassis. In said post, I mentioned that there was a “part II” coming, although rather than being about the chassis, it is about a complete car that was made for-and mounted on-a TR3 chassis when I acquired it. I originally mentioned this car only once, briefly, back in the spring of 2021; now, its time to take a fresh look at this model of one of the most exciting cars ever made.

You may recall me making an issue more than once about how much I’m wishing for a good quality T-Jet body of the Mercedes-Benz 300SL “gullwing” coupe, one of the most beautiful cars ever made. I would find out later than German firm Bauer actually did make one of these for the T-Jet format, but it is extremely hard to come by and ridiculously expensive if you can find one; I entered an auction for one a while ago and lost it. What I did find back in mid-’21, though, was a resin version of the 300SLR coupe, a priceless historical artifact of which only 2 of the real thing were built.

The 300SLR gullwing coupe-usually referred to as the “Uhlenhaut Coupé” after the engineer who designed it-is an amazing historical footnote from automotive history: a closed version of the open car that MBZ designed and built to win the World Sportscar Championship in 1955. Not merely a bigger version of the already impressive 300SL, the SLR (for Sport, Leicht, Rennen: sport, light, racing version) was derived from the W196 Grand Prix car; in fact, the factory code for the car was W196S, while the Grand Prix model was the W196R, showing how close the family resemblance was; while the 300SL was equipped with a 3-liter inline 6 and a road-going version was made and sold to the public, the SLR used the Grand Prix-derived inline 8, slightly de-stroked for the sports version to a 3-Liter capacity.

1955 was one of the most exciting years in history for motor racing, as the competition between Mercedes, Jaguar, and Ferrari was so fierce that it captivated the attention of every gearhead in the world! Early on, the car was cleaning up on circuits all over Europe, but we all know how its career was tragically cut short by the catastrophic crash at LeMans, an event that would echo through the motor racing world for decades and is still remembered today. MBZ withdrew from motor racing entirely after that event, but we can only imagine what would have happened had that fatal moment at LeMans not occurred.

As a result of this, the 2 coupe versions of the SLR were tragically never raced. One of the 2 was used by designer Rudolf Uhlenhaut as his own personal road car for years, but MBZ retained ownership of both cars up until May of 2022, when it sold one of them to a mysterious and undisclosed “one-percenter” for $143,000,000, doubling the previous highest price ever paid in history for a car ($70M for a Ferrari 250GTO). It was roughly a year before that sale that I acquired this slightly smaller version, hand-made in resin, mounted on the JAG TR3 chassis for which it had been made.

I am almost certain that this body is the work of the unknown maker whose eBay store was once called “Taillights Fade,” but who now appears to have changed that to the more descriptive “ho scale resin slot car body kits.” Regardless, it came already painted in the only color it could be-metallic silver-with the window insert already included, leaving nothing for me to do with it but add a racing number, which I did, in short order.

At this time it seemed like it was as close as I was going to get to having a 300SL Gullwing coupe for my track. I bought this car for the body rather than the chassis, yet when it arrived, something became clear to me which I had not noticed up to that point: the TR3 chassis was sized as an EXACT replica of the original Aurora T-Jet chassis, and therefore it was ever so slightly smaller-and had a slightly smaller wheelbase-then the fractionally larger Auto World Ultra G. You can bet I tried to mount it on an Ultra G, but I was disappointed with the way it looked, feeling like the wheelbase was just “off” enough that the car didn’t look right. As a result, it became an artifact on my shelf.

That is, until this weekend…

I’ve been trying to bump my sports car fleet up to a total of 96 cars, but I’ve said countless times, there are few fewer sports and sports-racing style cars of the classic era that have been rendered in miniature for the T-Jet than there are of muscle cars. This was the motivation for my post of March of 2022, where I listed a few of the most famous classic sports cars ever made that I would love to see recreated in HO for slot racing. And so, I finally decided again to mount it on an Ultra G chassis. I choose a brand new one, making the needed adjustments to the traction magnet and the axles, and of course I fitted it with a set of Road Race Replicas wire wheels because that’s was the real car had, so it can’t wear anything else. Yes, the wheel base is off a little and yes, that bothers me a little; but adding this car to my racing fleet just seemed worth it. And now, here it is, ready to race with “Group C” when next sports car tournament gets run!

In the 70 years since they were built, these cars have rarely seen the light of day, but on those occasions with the Mercedes-Benz museum in Stuttgart brought one out to play on the track, anyone lucky enough to have been there to see and hear it experienced what must be a “holy grail event” for any gearhead! With its unmuffled exhausts that stick right out the passenger side ahead of the door-which can frequently be seen shooting flames-the sound and the fury of this car on the track is nothing short of nirvana. There can be no question that this is one of the most beautiful, most impressive cars ever made by anyone anywhere at any time; it is a pinnacle of motoring’s long gone golden era, and even if its not exactly realistic to see one showing up to race at Drag City, I could no longer resist the urge to see it there. Perhaps we can say its an almost perfect replica: roughly 10 years ago, a company called “Alloy Cars” claimed they were going to build 10 of them, which were supposed to be hand-crafted perfect recreations of the real thing. This project does not appear to ever have been completed, but what if one did get finished? And what if it showed up to wow the crowd lucky enough to be in Wardglenn CA in 1986? Well, we can only imagine, and that kind of imagination is what Drag City Raceway is all about!